


Tiny Brands Incised

by akisawana



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Ensemble Cast, F/M, Five knuckle shuffle, sci-fi medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-06-09 04:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6891058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a difference between how they treat a rookie and how they treat a child. Carolina doesn't see it. Caboose does. </p><p>There is more to Caboose than a collection of interesting scars. Doctor Grey doesn't know how to help him. Carolina does.</p><p>A story where there are no bad guys and no violence, no fighting and no cruelty. Except from Charon's mercs, who are being quite inconsiderate about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lights-out was more a suggestion than anything else in Armonia. The city was still crawling with kids, on patrol or socializing or hurrying on off-duty errands. Carolina liked it most nights, falling asleep to the hum of life.

Tonight, not so much. Tonight insomnia stroked her hair and refused to let her sleep, lost voices singing an anti-lullaby. Tonight Carolina walked the streets, seeking company. If she couldn’t sleep, she didn’t want to be alone.

Carolina made her way to the burned-out shell Sarge had commandeered as his workshop. She avoided other soldiers as much as she can, not wanting to deal with the children tonight. For the most part, she was successful, and as she entered the keycode she made a note to speak to Kimball about the sentries.

Sarge was in there, as she expected, up to his elbows in unidentifiable robot parts. What she didn’t expect was Caboose, fully armored and sitting with his back against the cabinets. He didn’t stand up when he saw her, and Carolina registered that as a bad sign. But he did say, “Hello Carolina. You are up past your bedtime too.”

“So I am, Caboose,” she said, leaning against the workbench and peering at what Sarge was doing as if she understood it. Sarge grunted an acknowledgement of her presence, most of his attention on the soldering iron. It must have been delicate work.

“Is your head too loud too?” Caboose asked, tilting his helmet up. “Tucker is gone and my room is too quiet. It’s like pine trees, you know?”

“Son,” Sarge said, sounding much less irritable than normal, “Nobody knows how you got from Tucker abandoning you to pine trees. For one thing, pine trees come in threes, everyone knows that!”

“Tucker didn’t abandon me,” Caboose insisted, cutting off whatever else Sarge was going to say about pine trees. “It is Tucker’s night to keep us safe. Is that why you are here, Carolina?”

“I don’t follow,” Carolina said. With Sarge and Caboose, that was normal.

“If Tucker is keeping us safe, then we’re all going to die.” Caboose put his head in his hands. “And then nobody will be able to feed Freckles and he will be very sad.”

Carolina laughed. “He’s kept you alive for how long now?” she asked. “And from what I hear, that’s quite the feat.”

“No, you’re thinking of Church,” Sarge corrected. “He’s died half a dozen times! Caboose here, he’s easy to keep alive. Follows orders! Keeps his armor on! Doesn’t go around jumping in front of knives!”

“Yes, Tucker is an idiot,” Caboose agreed, before getting distracted by tapping on the ground.

Sarge turned back to his project. “If you’re going to stay, make yourself useful and come over here,” he said after a minute. “Take these.” Carolina held out her hand and Sarge poured half a dozen screws in it. “No duct tape in the entire city,” he grumbled. “How can you get anything done with no duct tape?”

“I don’t know,” Carolina said. Her parents had both been great believers in the stuff, and while Project Freelancer had more than enough funds for proper repairs, a roll was standard issue for the field. The idea of rebuilding civilization without duct tape? Inconceivable.

Behind them, Caboose smacked the ground one last time and fell asleep. He twitched horribly when he was tired, and Carolina barely registered the weirdness of it any more. “He’s a true soldier,” Sarge said. “Sleeps anywhere.”

“No, he’s not.” Caboose couldn’t sleep in a room alone. Caboose couldn’t follow orders, and not in the way Wyoming used to give her lip and wander off. Caboose was...Caboose. Useful in his own way, but not in a fight. “Even by sim trooper standards. How did he even end up with you?”

Sarge went quiet again. Carolina wasn’t used to the old man not rambling on. What was he building? A nuclear bomb out of a vibrator and a protocol droid? “He used to be a proper soldier. The boy’s killed more Blues than Simmons! And Simmons is no Grif! But that O’Malley fella knocked around his head and he’s never been the same.” Sarge shook his head. “O’Malley stole something from him, and it’s a damn shame. Not the kind of thing you can get back, either. I wonder what Caboose did to make him so angry sometimes.”

“Omega -O’Malley- was not one of the nicer fragments,” Carolina said. Omega had terrorized the Mother of Invention for two weeks, until Tex was back in radio range. After that, Tex had kept him on a short leash. “All Caboose would have had to do is inhale.”

Omega had tortured the Alpha. Carolina knew that much. She knew he’d tortured the Alpha and scared Theta once, if not the details. Did he share Gamma’s disdain for humans? Perhaps. He certainly could have hurt Caboose like Eta and Iota never wanted to, like Epsilon attempted desperately to avoid. The youngest fragments were bad enough. Carolina couldn’t imagine what the oldest and strongest could have done if he tried.

“Whatever he did, Caboose is ours now,” Sarge said, handing more screws to Carolina. “Now if only we could convince him to paint that blasted blue armor!”

* * *

Caboose liked to walk Freckles before he went to bed. It was a good time to find his squad, see what they were up to and make sure they were staying out of trouble. Caboose was very proud of how much trouble his squad caused for the enemy, but sometimes he needed to remind them that the Feds were not the enemy any more.

The best part was when he got back towards the base where he and Tucker and Simmons and Grif and Sarge and Donut and Lopez and Wash and Carolina were bunked. Caboose didn’t know what it was supposed to be, but it had a roof and a fence and a gate and a little garden where Simmons and Donut were trying to grow tomatoes. That was not working very well.

There was a bench in front, a heavy stone thing Grif had dragged under a tree, that had to be older than Chorus itself. Caboose could not hug the tree, not without help from Tucker, and Tucker refused to hug a tree. But at night, when he wasn’t too busy, Church would wait for Caboose on the old bench.

The tree blocked out the sky, and most of the starlight, but Church was glowing dimly in his usual spot when Caboose sat down. Caboose was glad, because he had an important question. Carolina had been staring at him for two days, since she came to Sarge’s workshop. That could mean a lot of things. She stared at Wash, and sometimes at Tucker, and she used to stare at Red Team. She was very like Tex in that you always knew exactly what her face looked like under the helmet.

“What’s up, Caboose?” Church asked. The numbers in Caboose’s helmet had jumped again. No matter what he did, his clock refused to keep proper time. It wasn’t important but it was annoying.

“Is Carolina mad at me?” It came out whinier than Caboose intended. Epsilon didn’t mind, for once. “Dude,” he laughed, “Carolina is permanently pissed off at _everyone_.”

Caboose nodded. He’d known lots of people like that. “But is she angry for a reason? I do not want her to be angry with me.” Carolina was much prettier when she was not angry. Some women were cute when they were mad. Carolina just looked like she was hurting.

“No, no you didn’t,” Epsilon said, settling on Caboose’s leg. “You’re good. And Carolina isn’t upset with you. She’s just upset in general.”

“Oh.” Caboose nodded, and the solution seemed obvious to him. “Maybe she just needs a friend.”

Epsilon sighed, very dramatically for a hologram. “That is the problem, man. All her friends are dead. Like Wash.”

“Then I will be her friend!” Wash’s friends used to all be dead but then Caboose was his friend, and then Tucker, and now he had lots of friends and wasn’t sad anymore! Well, sometimes he was sad, but less than before. How did they start with Wash? “I will make her birthday cake!”

“Oh no.” Epsilon shook his head. “Carolina has more than enough problems already, she doesn’t need your lost puppy routine. And she lives on coffee and MREs. Leave her alone, you can’t fix everyone.”

“She is not broken!” Caboose said. How could Epsilon be so stupid? Carolina was not broken. Felix was broken and the Meta had been broken and Wash used to be broken but then they fixed him after Epsilon went into the pod. Carolina was not broken. She was just sad. “Coffee is sad.”

Epsilon held his little glowing hands up. “You can’t make someone happy just because you want them to be,” he said. Which was stupid, because why else would Caboose try to find a way to make Carolina happy? “I gotta go back in. You coming?”

“Yes.” Caboose stood up and cradled Freckles. Freckles should go to bed soon. Caboose followed Church into the building, and went upstairs when Church peeled off in the direction of the kitchen.

Tucker wasn’t home yet, which made putting Freckles to bed go twice as quickly. Caboose did not know where Tucker was, and he thought about pinging him, but then he might actually have to talk to Tucker. Caboose loved Tucker like he imagined he would love a brother: preferably from a great distance.

There were other advantages to Tucker being gone, too. Privacy, for one, and Caboose settled down on his bunk in his pajamas with the bottle he’d swiped from Donut weeks ago. It smelled like oranges, and nothing at all like Carolina.

Caboose would have liked it to smell like Carolina. He didn’t know exactly what she smelled like, but he imagined she smelled like a processor with the smoke let out, like a motorcycle ticking, like things that burn. Carolina was pretty, pretty eyes and pretty hair, pretty kicks and pretty shooting. She was fast, too, faster than Caboose, faster than anyone. And not just moving fast like Donut or running fast like Doc, Carolina did everything fast. Caboose thought he must be stronger, though. He would like to try wrestling with her. She could hit him six times before he hit her once, but he liked to think he’d only have to hit her once.

Except Caboose didn’t want to hit Carolina, not at all. He didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted to touch her, and the only time she’d let anyone do that was when she was wrestling Wash, but Caboose wanted to pick her up. He wanted to pick her up when she was out of armor, when she was wearing only the black undersuit, and carry her. Caboose gave the best piggy back rides, everyone knew.

He stretched his legs, pointed his toes and let his knees roll out. Caboose would carry Carolina to a bed, a real bed and not an army cot or a metal shelf on the wall, and lay her down on a real mattress and a real blanket. He’d pull down the seal on her survival suit, help her peel the kevlar down. Caboose didn’t know what Carolina looked like under armor, but he imagined her breasts would be small, just big enough to hold onto. He knew what color her nipples would be, everyone knew a person’s nipples were the same color as her lips, and Caboose would run his thumb over one, bend his head to lick and suck and tease. Would they taste like sweat or beer or just skin?

Caboose slid his hand down his own belly, imagined doing the same to Carolina. Would she be ticklish? Probably not. She’d probably have more scars than Tucker but less than Grif, and maybe one day she’d let Caboose explore them but he couldn’t imagine them now. So he’d drag his fingers across her hips and cup his hands over the heat between her legs. That was familiar territory for Caboose, and every woman he’d been with was different but the idea was always the same. Slowly at first, unless she told him otherwise, and spreading her lips gently. He’d start low, gather some slick dampness on his fingers, and once they were well-lubed, roll them around her clit. Just like he did to himself now, his fingers tight around the base of his cock, light circles around the head, until it grew hot and heavy in his hand, and Caboose pretended the pulse he could feel was Carolina’s and not his own.

The smell of chemical oranges filled the room as Caboose fumbled the bottle open. He poured a lot on his hand, hissing a little at the chill. What sort of sounds would Carolina make? Would she call his name or tell him what he was doing right, or just make wordless noises? He wanted to know. He wanted Carolina to make happy noises.

He lifted his hips and slid his pants out of the way. Maybe, if he did a good job, Carolina would let him ride her knee while he tasted her. That would be nice, and he pressed his hand against his cock, now hard and leaking. Carolina did everything, tried to do even more. Someone should take care of her for once. Caboose wasn’t good at a lot of things, but he would be good at this, sliding his fingers inside of Carolina and sucking on her clit. Would she like it a little rough? She could take it, but maybe she’d want Caboose to be gentle, to curl his free hand around her hip while she ran her fingers through his hair.

It hit him by surprise, halfway up his chest and hot and Caboose nearly yelped in surprise at the electric shocks up his spine. But they were followed, almost instantly, by a wave of sadness. Carolina wouldn’t let him touch her. Nobody would, anymore. Not even Grif’s sister.

Caboose wiped himself off with a couple of kleenex, tossed them in the garbage can at the foot of his bed. How much later would Tucker be out? Caboose rolled on his belly, pulled the pillow over his head, and waited.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caboose is less of an idiot than he pretends and more than he admits.

It was an intensely boring meeting, and Carolina was not sure why she was wanted here. Kimball had asked, so she had come, of course, but _why_ Carolina didn’t understand. They weren’t talking about anything to do will shooting Charon’s goons, which was the sum total of Carolina’s applicable skill set.

Perhaps it had something to do with the way Sarge was standing behind Doyle. The rest of Red team was out trying to take back an outpost that was a little too close to the city for _anyone_ to feel comfortable with Felix and Locus having access. That tended to make Sarge stick close to Doyle -and the incoming reports- like a plasma grenade.

Perhaps Kimball simply did not want to be outnumbered by thick-headed men. Carolina could appreciate that. She could appreciate less why Kimball and Doyle were discussing _water._ They were in the middle of a jungle, not a desert. There was water all around. It rained nearly every night. Water was almost the only problem they did not have.

Carolina was just wondering if this was some elaborate ploy by Doyle to frustrate Kimball into conceding something important when the door slammed open. Impressive, given that it was automatic.

“Sarge,” Caboose bellowed, waving Freckles around dangerously. “You need to come fix Simmons! Right now! Please!”

“Looks like they came back early,” Epsilon said quietly, where only Carolina could hear.

“And in pieces,” Carolina agreed. Not good.

“Caboose, what do you mean?” Kimball laid a hand on Caboose’s arm, gently pushing the gun away from Doyle’s face. “Do we need to call in the second shift early?”

Caboose shook his head. “No, no, General, Simmons needs _Sarge,_ it has to be Sarge. Nobody else can fix him!”

Sarge had been looking at the ceiling, presumably talking on the radio with someone. He looked down and walked towards the door without saying a word, grabbing Caboose’s shoulder on the way out.

“Sarge,” Doyle said, shifting his feet. “Must you go? This is very important, and I’m sure the medics can take care of Captain Simmons, regardless of what Captain Caboose thinks.”

“What do you mean by that,” Kimball snapped.

“Oh, come now, Miss Kimball,” Doyle said. “You know far better than I how Captain Caboose is prone to wasting time and resources because he misunderstands the situation. I’m sure the medics are more than capable of taking care of your friend.”

“Simmons is a cyborg.” Epsilon popped up in front of Doyle’s face. He didn’t curse or wave his tiny arms, dangerously angry. Carolina could feel the pressure, feel how tightly he was hanging on to keep himself from turning black and growling. “ _Caboose_ is a genius engineer. If Caboose can’t fix it alone, I don’t know that anyone besides Sarge would even be able to help.”

“Really?” The General sounded honestly confused, which did not win him any points. “Is he some sort of idiot savant?”

Carolina looked to Caboose and Sarge. But Sarge was gone and Caboose was edging out of the room. When he saw Carolina looking at him, he lifted his hand to his helmet and flashed her the Spartan smile. He knew, she realized. He knew that people thought he was an idiot, and he took advantage of that. Whether to just embarrass Doyle and get the General scolded, or whether he was distracting anyone from asking more questions Carolina didn’t know, but whatever his motive he knew exactly what he was doing. The sneaky little _shit_. Carolina couldn’t stop herself from grinning proudly under her helmet. Caboose had even fooled _her_ , and she’d been forced into playing head games with people for almost forty years.

“I just don’t see how he can be worth the hassle,” Doyle continued. “Even if he is as good with machines as you say, does it really make up for how much damage he can do?”

“Captain Caboose is worth ten of you,” Kimball hissed. “That would be true if he didn’t know which end of a screwdriver to hold. My men and women would follow him to hell. And Captain Caboose would bring them all back, or die trying.” Epsilon had shut down for some reason, contracted himself inside Carolina’s armor, but when Kimball mentioned Caboose dying, he turned over with oily unease. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see what happened. I trust Captain Caboose enough that he would not have interrupted a meeting unless it was truly important, whatever you may think.”

Kimball marched out of the room, Carolina trailing in her wake. Doyle seemed to work with the eternal goal of getting his foot in his mouth as many times as humanly possible, and Kimball was right. They really didn’t have time for that. “Agent Carolina,” Kimball said. “Have you heard anything from your friends? I do trust Caboose but…”

“His priorities are rarely ours?” Carolina finished. “Not yet, but Sarge must have.” She sent a message to Wash, asking him how badly off Simmons was. If Caboose and the medics couldn’t fix him, Epsilon was right. Only Sarge and his inexplicable skill in all things medical plus his graduate-level robotics could help Simmons now.

The reply took longer than Carolina expected. “How much is Simmons fucked up?” Wash’s voice was high enough to crack glass, and the pitch told Carolina precisely how bad it was. “Well, he’s covered in blood, but it’s all Grif’s.”

* * *

The doctor’s office looked like a spaceship had crashed in it, alien artifacts spilling off shelves full of datapads. Caboose thought he could fix the magnetic splint propping the door open, if Doctor Grey let him. He could see where the neodymium had fallen out, it would be so easy to find some and close the circuit.

“Caboose? Is that you?” the doctor called from inside the office.

“Yes,” Caboose said, tearing himself from the door stopper. He took his helmet off and tucked it under his arm, walking into the room. There was a dartboard right at his eye level next to the door. “You wanted to see me?” Caboose asked, edging away from the dartboard. Whatever else Dr. Grey was good at, her aim ranked somewhere below Church’s. Actually, that meant he should be standing right in front of it, right?

“Yes, Captain Caboose,” the doctor said, popping up from behind her desk. “I have good news! Even though you are having multiple daily seizures, we have more than enough pamaxillol! Also you have epilepsy and we need to get that under control before you die.”

“I don’t have epilepel, lepelsypy, epleys,” Caboose said. The word refused to come out right, his mouth could not make it work. He bet he could manage a fuck, but Doctor Grey was an officer and a lady. “I don’t have seizures.” Caboose didn’t quite remember what that word meant either. He remembered maniacal laughter, and Dr.Grey seemed concerned about it. It was probably bad. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell with Dr. Grey.

“Sweetie, seizures don’t have to be dramatic convulsions and foaming at the mouth!” Dr. Grey came around her desk and put her hand on Caboose’s arm. Even in armor, it was very small. “You had a head injury, right? I can show you on the scans how the scars from it are causing focal seizures. Your helmet’s been recording them this whole time. It’s remarkable how you’ve survived this long, if your helmet records are accurate! Unmedicated post-traumatic epilepsy logs in a non-clinical setting is very valuable data!”

“I do not have seizures,” Caboose repeated. It didn’t matter what the doctor said. Omega had burned scars in his head. Tucker and Church had been worried about him afterwards, he remembered. They’d ask him if he was okay. Sometimes he’d end up on the floor and not remember falling. Sometimes Tex would lay down next to him in her robot body and tell him he was okay. Tex never yelled at him. She was a scary lady but she helped him where Omega broke Caboose.

Tex said he was okay, so Doctor Grey must be wrong. So it didn’t matter whatever else she had to say, and surely she had more important things to do, people who actually needed her.

Caboose walked out of Doctor Grey’s office without really registering anything else she had said, and let his feet pick where he was going. Delta helped too. Delta had climbed into his head and he was very different from Omega. Delta made a tiny nest, compared to how Omega ran around everywhere, and Delta found a mop and a bucket. Delta had asked Caboose, once, if he had any brothers. He had asked Caboose to close his eyes. After that, Caboose didn’t fall down and forget anymore.

His feet walked him over to the canteen, where Grif and Tucker and Simmons were celebrating Grif not dying. Grif still had white gauze taped to his neck and he’d been hit by a tank once and he was okay now. Sarge put Grif together and Simmons gave him his organs and Donut held his hand. Tucker kicked a chair out for Caboose. Tucker had a baby and Church promised O’Malley anything if he’d help Tucker and Caboose fed Junior.

Caboose couldn’t have seizures. His friends would have helped him. Doctor Grey must be wrong. It was okay. Not a lot of people knew about AIs.

* * *

Carolina didn’t really think of Emily as a doctor any more. She popped up in so many places, being so helpful, that Carolina had almost forgot that Emily knocked her friends out and sliced them open for fun. So when Emily bounced around the corner and said, “Carolina! Just the person I was looking for!” Carolina expected anything but what happened next.

Emily held a small orange bottle out to Carolina. “I need you to convince Caboose to take these.”

Carolina tilted her head at the doctor. She was sure, she was fifty percent sure, that there was a perfectly innocuous explanation for this. “Why do you want Caboose to swallow a bottle of mystery pills?”

“Not all at once, silly,” Emily giggled. “It’s pamaxillol. For his epilepsy. He won’t take it.”

“Isn’t even telling me this illegal?” Carolina tried not to be disappointed in yet another doctor with no ethics. Emily hadn’t done any of the questionable things Carolina had survived, and she’d hoped that meant she wouldn’t. “Much less having me convince him? I don’t know about the Federal Army, but in the UNSC, they usually let people choose what they’re going to put in their bodies.” 

“Yes, but…” Emily took a datapad out of an ammo pouch and fiddled with it for a second, then handed it to Carolina. “This is the biometric record of his brain activity as picked up by his helmet.”

“If you say so.” Carolina didn’t know what she was looking at. For all she knew, it was a spectrograph of every dirty joke Tucker had told within Caboose’s earshot.

“Do you see all that yellow?” Dr Grey asked. “Those are the focal seizures he had in the last twenty-four hours he was wearing his helmet. I’d just tie him to the bed until I could get him to listen to me, but we don’t have restraints big enough for him! He’s quite healthy! Except for the way his brain is sparking every ten minutes!”

Carolina stepped back. “Okay, first of all, nobody’s getting tied to a bed.”

“He’s having over a hundred seizures a day,” Emily insisted. “I can treat him, I can, but he has to let me or he will die. Maybe not today, maybe not in ten years, but maybe after dinner. And I just don’t think I explained it well enough to him.” Carolina noticed she was wringing her hands. She’d never see the doctor do that before. “I can’t imagine he’d say no if he just understood but he walked right out the door in the middle of my sentence! He wouldn’t do that to you, though, would he?”

“Carolina,” Epsilon said in her radio. “She’s right. There’s no way Caboose understood that and still won’t take it. He’s not _that_ stupid.”

“Then why don’t you do it?” Carolina asked him.

It took Epsilon a minute to respond, a minute Emily shifted silently. The longest Carolina had ever heard her go without speaking. “I will if you won’t, but it’ll come better from you. He thinks you can’t be wrong.”

That was a little scary, given Carolina’s track record with Caboose. But if it kept his brain from melting out his ears, well, it wasn’t like she was _abusing_ it. And she certainly wasn’t letting anyone tie Caboose to anything. “I’ll try,” she said, taking the pills from Emily. “For him.”

“Thank you!” Emily chirped. “I don’t want to restrain him, but I’m not going to stand here and let his brain liquefy without at least trying.”

Carolina looked at Emily, and thought about all the people that had died since they brought down the tower. All the people who had died before then. All the empty shelves in the pharmacy. She thought about the Habanera, and about her father.

And really, she liked Caboose. Things were simple with him. He went out of his way to make things easy, to make people happy. He’d even called her pretty once. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, much less dying of too many seizures too close together. If there were more people like Caboose…

“No,” Epsilon interrupted. “Don’t even go there.”

“Thank you,” Emily said again. “Oh, you wouldn’t happen to know how he got the original injury, would you?” she added, so casual she had to be faking it. “All anyone will tell me is demonic possession, and that’s just not scientific.”

It was a good thing Carolina’s helmet hid her smile, because she couldn’t have stopped it if she tried. “I wasn’t there,” she said, proud of how deadpan her voice was. “But that program they were in did some very strange, very classified stuff. Demon summoning would fit right in.”

Emily produced another datapad. “I heard about the experiments,” she said. “Have you ever seen inside Captain Grif?”

“And that’s our cue to go,” Epsilon said, “before Dr Grey finds the pictures.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -HIPPA does not exist on Chorus.  
> -That is not a real medication.  
> -Grif is almost as hard to kill as Wash.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Questions. Answers. A disappointing lack of dick jokes.

“Apple sauce,” Epsilon said, as Carolina went out looking for Caboose. “He’ll never taste it.”

“I’m not slipping him drugs,” Carolina said. “I’m going to explain to him what’s going on and let him do what he wants.”

“But Caboose is an idiot!” Epsilon spluttered. “He doesn’t know what day it is half the time!”

“Then if he wants, I will remind him.” Carolina refused to think about York doped to the gills and telling her things she didn’t want to know. Refused to think about Wash screaming, until someone stabbed a hypo in his shoulder. “You said it yourself, Caboose isn’t that stupid. I’ll explain it to him, and if he still doesn’t want to take it, I’m sure he’ll have a good reason.”

Epsilon didn’t say anything, logging off with the mental equivalent of a slammed door. Carolina let him. There were plenty of reasons a person wouldn’t take a pill. It could be hard to swallow or they could be allergic to it. And if Caboose wanted to...but no. Caboose could grasp this concept. She’d explain it like a robot or an AI, that would help him understand.

“Epsilon,” Carolina asked. “Epsilon. This is all from Omega, right?”

Epsilon appeared in a flicker of sulky periwinkle. “Yes,” he said, “mostly.”

Carolina waited.

“Look, he got in Caboose’s head and he made a mess. Alpha had to force him out. He didn’t go quietly, tried to burn down the place on his way out. I’ve been in there and seriously, I’d rather be in Grif any day.”

“Okay,” Carolina said, a mental nod. Omega was strong, but Omega was also more than a little evil. Letting him run around in a person was a bad idea. Eta and Iota hadn’t

Eta’s laugh sounded like

Eta loved her twin

Iota lov 

They l

Carolina shook her head, dismissing useless memories. Epsilon was talking. She should listen. She should keep moving.

“It’s electrical burns, right to the brain,” Epsilon said, like Carolina hadn’t stopped dead. Carolina started walking again. “You don’t come back from that.”

“I know all about AI damage,” Carolina reminded him.

“Yeah, top marks in the class. Hey, did North get put in the front row before or after he got Theta?”

“After, I think,” Carolina didn’t think much about the Project these days. Too much to do, like find Caboose. And for Epsilon to be throwing out questions, clearly he didn’t want to talk about the inside of Caboose’s head.

Caboose was, unsurprisingly, in Sarge’s workshop, up to his elbows in unidentifiable robot parts. When he saw her, though, he carefully unwove his hands from the tangle and waved at her. “Hello, Carolina,” he said. He wasn’t wearing his gauntlets, though he had the rest of his armor on.

“Hi, Caboose,” she answered. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, I am not doing anything now,” he said. “I was waving at you but you saw it.”

Carolina tipped her head to the side. “Are you saying that because you’re not supposed to be taking that apart?”

“Nobody told me not to take this apart, which doesn’t matter because I am not breaking this down.” 

Carolina figured that meant he wasn’t supposed to even have that. “Dr. Grey showed me something important, something about you.” She offered him the datapad, the test results still on the screen.

Caboose reached up and took his helmet off, shaking out his mop of black curls. He ignored the datapad and looked down at her with huge dark eyes. “It is very yellow,” he said. “Like Grif’s sister.”

Yeah, that was about as much as Carolina had gotten out of it. She stowed it back in her armor. “Look, Dr. Grey says you need the medicine, and there’s not enough of it on the planet for her to give it to you if you didn’t need it.” If Caboose refused to understand the medicine, maybe she could appeal to common sense. Not ideal, but she knew now that he was smarter than he let on.

“She should give it to someone else. There is nothing wrong with me.” Caboose pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “Epsilon would have told me a long time ago. He is my best friend.”

“Caboose!” Epsilon manifested on the table in a shower of sparks. “I have been _telling_ you for a long _fucking_ time that your brain is, literal actual, _shit!_ ” He stamped his tiny glowing foot through a spare screw, waved his arms. 

Carolina tuned out his ranting. It was a little too close to her father’s for comfort, but she had plenty of practice ignoring that as well. Instead she watched Caboose, watched the way he folded his fingers together over his chest, the way he smiled down bemusedly at Church’s tirade like a kindly brontosaurus.

Caboose didn’t want to talk about it, so he acted like an idiot until Epsilon was too angry to have this conversation. Once Carolina had realized what he was up to, she saw Caboose doing this a lot. How had nobody else caught on?

Then again, her father had done much the same thing, used progressively longer words, made his explanations more complicated, until people gave up. Perhaps that had primed her to recognize it.

She set the pill bottle on the table next to Epsilon, who was now lying on his back, his hands over his face. “In case you change your mind,” she said as she walked out the door. Long experience with Leonard Church’s tantrums had taught her that there was no getting through to Caboose when there was an audience. She’d come back later without Epsilon, back him into a corner and make him understand. Somehow. If she could just get Caboose to admit he had a problem...

* * *

Donut wouldn’t lie to Caboose. Donut never lied, which was usually hilarious and occasionally terrifying.

Donut was outside, showing a bunch of New Republic soldiers how to...Caboose was not sure what they were doing. It looked like they were finger painting, and he wondered why Donut hadn’t invited him.

But he had very important things to do.

“What’s up, Caboose?” Donut asked, his armor covered in at least three different greens and a smear of grey on his faceplate. 

All of Caboose’s carefully rehearsed phrasing came out as “Is there something wrong with me?” That happened with his mouth sometimes. He would say something and his mouth would make it English and it would be wrong.

“Of course not, Caboose,” Donut said. “You’re perfectly you. Did someone say that was wrong? Do I need to talk to them?”

Donut didn’t lie, but he could be very creative with the truth when he wanted to be. “No, Corporal Cupcake. Nobody said anything.”

* * *

Tucker hated Caboose. Tucker would tell him the truth. Tucker was also hard to find, but Caboose eventually located him breaking up a fight between some of Orange Team and a handful of Feds.

Caboose was not stupid or suicidal, so he waited until Tucker had sent them all off to work on shoring up the walls before he said anything.

When Tucker saw him, he sighed and grunted, “What are you doing here, Caboose? Did you start a fire?”

“No.” Caboose shook his head. Tucker didn’t need to know about the fire. “Did O’Malley break me?”

“What? Rookie, that was years ago! Why are you asking now?” If Caboose didn’t have his armor, if Tucker was the wrong color, Caboose would always know who he was. Tucker talked with his hands, his whole body. Right now he was saying words and also saying that it didn’t matter now and it never mattered before, not in a way that was important.

Caboose shrugged. He didn’t want to tell Tucker about the pills. Tucker was always complaining about Caboose, he’d make him take the pills. And Caboose wanted it to be years ago, he wanted to not still be messed up in the head. It was supposed to be over. He was supposed to be okay now.

“Yeah, O’Malley really fucked you up.” Tucker reached up and put a hand on Caboose’s shoulder, as if it would make it better. And normally, it did. Not now. “When I saw you later you were mostly okay. You saw a real doctor after Blood Gulch, right? Not just Doc?”

“Doctor Grey says I’m not okay,” Caboose admitted. The words felt heavy in his mouth. But it was better than telling Tucker about Rat’s Nest, and Tucker was a lot harder to lie to than Donut.

Tucker shrugged and squeezed Caboose’s shoulder, all sound and nothing he could feel through his armor. “I said _mostly_ okay, dipshit. You got battle scars, that’s all. And if Doctor Grey doesn’t get that, you tell me and I’ll have a talk with her. You do stuff just fine.”

Caboose nodded. Tucker was smart. Caboose had scars but he found a way around them. “Like when I rescued you in the desert.”

Tucker snorted. “That wasn’t a rescue, that was a fucking disaster,” he said. “But I guess that was mostly the Reds’ fault.”

“Grif did not want me to go alone,” Caboose said. “I had to bring him because you wouldn’t believe it.”

“I don’t,” Tucker said, letting go of Caboose. “I figured Sarge and his shotgun made Grif come.”

“Nope,” Caboose said, drawing out the n. “It was all Grif’s idea.”

“You’re right,” Tucker said. “I don’t believe it. Look, I gotta go make sure my team’s laying the pipe. Bow chicka bow wow.”

“Bye.” Caboose waved at Tucker. Tucker wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. He should have come to Freelancer City with Caboose and Grif and Simmons. Things would have been much better.

* * *

Caboose ran into Wash outside their little house, lying on the bench with his helmet off. He looked old enough to be a grandpa, and Caboose sat down next to his head. Wash opened his eyes and looked up at him. “What’s wrong, Caboose?”

“Did you know I needed help? When you came and got me?” The words tripped over themselves, spilling out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Wash sat up. “I could tell,” he said. “But Command didn’t know and I wasn’t about to tell them.” That wasn’t what Caboose meant, but Wash kept talking. “What they would do to you…” he trailed off, and his eyes went a little hazy.

“Agent Washington,” Caboose said, when Wash didn’t finish his sentence. He repeated it, louder, but he knew better than to touch Wash. “Agent Washington,” he said one more time, when Wash covered his face and trembled, barely perceptible. “Can I have a hug?”

“If you really need it,” Wash said into his palm, and Caboose pulled him in tight. Wash always said he didn’t need a hug, but he always said he would give one to Caboose, so Caboose always said it like it was him that needed the hug. Wash nestled right into Caboose’s neck, uncaring of the armor’s sharp edges. Caboose held him as long as he wanted to stay, and he didn’t ask if Washington was okay.

* * *

“I am not a Blue team problem,” Caboose said, leaning against the door frame to Grif and Simmons’ room. It was after dinner, when nobody was wearing their armor. “Blue team problems get taken care of.”

Grif and Simmons exchanged a look. Simmons stood up and said, “I am not having this conversation.” Caboose moved out of his way and let Simmons leave. At least Simmons was honest about not wanting to deal with the problem. 

Grif picked up his pack of cigarettes. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about, or just pretend?”

Stupid Grif, not paying attention to anything that wasn’t edible or trying to kill him. Caboose threw himself on the bed and buried his face in his arms. “Nobody took me to the doctor and I was sick. Wash was afraid and Tucker left me for Church and Church left me for Wash and all of _you_ thought they would do it.” Which was fair, because Caboose was not a Red, but he was not feeling particularly fair at the moment. And he was a little afraid of Red team medicine.

Grif reached out and ruffled Caboose’s hair, but Caboose batted his hand away. He wanted an answer, not a cookie and a pat on the head and being sent on his way. He’d settle for a cookie but Grif wasn’t offering and why was everyone _touching_ him lately?

“What were we supposed to do?” Grif asked. Caboose heard him click his lighter, smelled the cigarette smoke. He wondered if Grif would give him one or if Grif would tell him he was too young.

“Something,” Caboose moaned into his own elbow. “Fix me. I don’t know. That’s what’s broken.” He braced himself for Grif telling him he was fine, or fixed, or some other bull that translated to not Grif’s problem, go away and leave him alone.

Instead, Grif snorted. He sounded a lot like Tucker. “What makes you think we know either?”

Caboose picked his head up enough to glare at Grif with both eyes. “I am angry,” he informed Grif. 

“You _should_ be, man.” Grif sucked on his cigarette for a minute. “It’s shitty, what happened to you. But nobody wanted to make it worse, not when the only medic around was fucking Dufrense.”

“Who?”

“Doc.” Caboose nodded, and Grif kept talking. “Besides, didn’t you get help at Rat’s Nest?”

“No,” Caboose moaned again. Why did everyone keep _saying_ that? It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true. That would make them do it _again._

“Then where did you go when you disappeared and popped up later able to tie your own shoes?” Grif sounded honestly confused.

Caboose sat up, cross-legged, and twisted his head like Carolina did when someone said something stupid. “They tied me up and threw me in the brig,” he said. “And they called me names just because people kept dying when I was around even though it wasn’t my fault! So they tied me up and threw me in the dark and _left_ me!”

The bedroom tilted, and Caboose had to close his eyes until it settled down. The gentle earthquakes were so common in Armonia nobody even mentioned them any more. Sometimes Caboose thought he was the only one who could feel the earth shifting two inches to the right.

When he opened them again, Grif was sitting next to him on the bed, looking at him with faint horror. “It must have been that AI then. Delta,” Grif said, setting his cigarette on the nightstand’s ashtray. “Delta did something.”

“Not enough,” Caboose slumped, and then fell over, his head ending up on Grif’s leg. Grif made a great pillow, better than anyone else. “Doctor Grey says I’m still broken.”

Grif didn’t say anything else, but he did ruffle Caboose’s hair again, and this time Caboose let him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is talking, and reflection, and apple sauce.

Carolina had spent most of the last night coming up with a way to get Caboose to understand. The problem was that he pretended to be dumber than he really was, but Carolina had a front-row seat to the kind of damage an unhappy AI could do, and so she wasn’t sure how much was an act and how much was from the scars. 

It was difficult to find Caboose when he didn’t want to be found. It was doubly difficult when Carolina didn’t want to ask anyone if they’d seen him. She was afraid they’d tell her to follow the smoke, and then she’d have to shoot the poor guy just trying to help.

In the end, she’d made it harder to find Caboose than it should have been. He was in Sarge’s workshop, still dismantling his project. Carolina stopped just inside the door and watched him for a moment. Nobody who saw Caboose like this would think he was anything less than brilliant.

He wasn’t wearing his helmet or his gloves, and he was using tools today. Caboose clearly knew exactly what he was doing, no movement wasted, not even turning his head when he put down one tool and picked up another. He moved quickly, too, and it wasn’t rushed. Caboose simply didn’t have to think about this sort of thing.

A shadow or a sound tipped him off to his audience, and he looked up at her. “Hello, Agent Carolina.”

Carolina came across the floor and sat on a crate near Caboose. “Hello, Caboose.”

“Is Epsilon with you?” Caboose set his screwdriver down.

“No, they borrowed him to do something with the computer,” Carolina didn’t tell him that she’d left Epsilon behind on purpose. Bless his heart, but Caboose was a little shit who’d wind Epsilon right up and then never have to talk about the pills. “But we need to talk about your brain melting, and the pills Doctor Grey gave you.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Caboose turned back to his project, picked up a pair of pliers. “None of my friends said anything until Doctor Grey brought it up. I think I’m okay.”

“No, Caboose, you’re not,” Carolina said to the back of his head. “Nobody’s going to make you take medicine you don’t want, but I want you to know what you’re saying no to before you do.”

Caboose’s hands stopped moving, but he didn’t turn around. “I don’t know who’s supposed to make me take the medicine,” he said. “It was supposed to be Church but Church is different now. Maybe it’s Tucker? Or Wash? Yeah, I think it’s Wash that decides.”

Wash was not coming within ten feet of this clusterfuck, if Carolina had anything to do with it. Even if he’d somehow been appointed Caboose’s guardian, she wasn’t letting Wash anywhere near AI damage. And she wasn’t even sure that Wash had ever had that power over Caboose in the first place.

No, she was very sure. Wash would never let Caboose have a dog that could kill people. “Nobody, Caboose. This is your choice. Anyone who says otherwise has to get through me.”

Caboose turned around then, some wires dangling from his hand. “You sound like Tex, a lot,” he said. “I like Tex.”

Carolina had to take a deep breath at the mention of Tex’s name. Either Caboose was paying her a compliment or trying to distract her. “Caboose. We don’t think you should take the pills because they’re delicious. We don’t want your brain to become so encrusted with scar tissue you can’t keep your own heart beating. We want you to stop having seizures.”

“I don’t have seizures.” Caboose turned back around.

“Does your clock not work? In your helmet?” Carolina stood up and took a few steps closer to him. “Does it skip numbers?”

Caboose didn’t say anything for a long time. “Yes,” he said, pulling out another length of wire. 

“That’s a seizure.” Did Emily explain it to him? If she did, was Caboose paying attention? “And we -I- want you to stop.”

“My friends think I’m perfect just the way I am,” Caboose said. “There’s nothing wrong with what I do.”

Carolina winced inside her helmet. She forced herself to stay calm. She was one of Caboose’s friends, and she didn’t think he was perfect. Not at all. “No. There is something wrong with you. If it was just you stepping on Grif’s foot or spacing out when Wash is screeching, that would be okay. But you do those things because your brain is full of holes and they’re getting bigger..”

“What do you know about holes,” Caboose muttered, so quiet Carolina wasn’t sure she was supposed to hear it.

“I had two AIs, Caboose. In the project.” What was momentary discomfort on her part weighed against Caboose not dying? A little dramatic, she could admit, but Emily had been so scared. “I had two AIs at the same time and they needed a lot of room.”

Caboose turned around, finally, but he didn’t say anything. How old was he, anyways? Right now he looked old, thirty or more.

“I had two AIs, and they were taken from me.” Carolina closed her eyes inside her helmet, crossed her arms. Maine was strong, so strong. It had been so cold, without her helmet on, snow on the back of her neck. Iota had screamed and screamed and held on as tightly as a child with a dying mother. “They didn’t want to go.”

Caboose put his hand on her shoulder. She could feel it through her armor. He was strong, so strong.

Carolina shrugged him off, tried to ignore her racing heart. “Take the goddamn pills. Or don’t. But don’t tell me you’re okay when I know _exactly_ what it’s like.”

-

“My friends are idiots,” Caboose said to the machine. It had taken him a long time to find one that would fit with the drone he’d cannibalized. “I am mad at them. I don’t like being mad.”

O’Malley had been mad all the time. It wasn’t fun. It made Caboose’s mouth taste funny and his shoulders hurt and sometimes his eyes wouldn’t work right. It made him stupid and mean. “But sometimes you have to be mad because that’s how you know something is wrong.”

Did he have the right screwdriver? Yes, though it didn’t have a magnet tip and that would make taking the screws out harder than it should. “I don’t know if I should be mad this time. I don’t know if they did something wrong. I should be mad, Grif says, and Grif is smart.”

Smarter than Tucker and smarter than Simmons and maybe smarter than Wash. At least, Grif was smart about people like Sarge was smart about robots. “Grif says they didn’t want to make it worse. I think that means they were trying to do good by not doing bad. Right, Roger? That’s doing good. That’s doing the best good which is quiet.”

The case off, Caboose dove into the fun part. First he needed to pull out the pump. “They made a mistake, but I make mistakes too. They were trying. That’s what matters,” he repeated. “They were trying and that makes it okay and I should shut up and get over it.”

“And I don’t have to take them,” Caboose continued, unmounting the heater screws. “Carolina said. I should because I don’t want to die but I don’t have to. Carolina is very busy. She wouldn’t come tell me if it wasn’t very important.”

She knew about AIs, and AIs that didn’t want to leave. Caboose paused in his dismantling to line up the screws. There were a lot of screws. “She wouldn’t hurt me. She is not broken and Epsilon wouldn’t let her. And she knew about the numbers. I never told anyone about the numbers.”

“Caboose?” Simmons called from the door. “I brought you lunch.”

“It is not lunch time,” Caboose said. The screws kept moving, kept jumping out of his hands. How long had he been sorting screws?

“Well, the cafeteria is handing out lunch now, and I saved yours from Grif.”

Caboose stood up, touched by the gesture. Getting between Grif and food was not something Simmons did lightly. And for Caboose, never. Simmons didn’t like Caboose. Simmons didn’t like to share and he didn’t like to be second-best, and everything he was good at Caboose was better except sucking Grif’s dick.

“You’re not a problem,” Simmons continued, putting the tray on the table. “You’re an idiot. That’s not a problem. I have things to do.” Simmons fled, and Caboose wasn’t sure what just happened. Except Simmons had brought him food and Simmons didn’t like him but he loved him because after the fourth or fifth time you loved everyone who was there next to you beating out the flames.

Caboose picked up the cup of applesauce. He spent all morning and look what a tiny pile of screws he had to show for it. He could have finished the whole project in an hour once, he remembered, remembered breaking down one much like this one on his mother’s kitchen table before her telenovela was over. But it had taken him almost all morning to open up the casing. 

It didn’t matter what anyone else thought. Caboose didn’t like this, didn’t like being so slow, didn’t like dropping things and losing things and forgetting words. It didn’t matter how many people came in here to tell him it wasn’t a problem. Because it was, and he didn’t like it, and he wanted to try to make it stop.

And so did Carolina. “I trust her, Roger. But that’s not why I’m going to take them. She explained why I should and so I’m going to and I trust her and those are two different things.”

It was simple as that. So why did it make his eyes heavy and his food taste like crying? Caboose had never said it out loud. Maybe he should. Maybe that would make things better. “There is something wrong with my brain and it’s called epi-eplip-elpepsi. Seizures. I have seizures and I need to take the medicine to stop them.”

The world didn’t end. 

-

It took a long time for Carolina to run off the conversation with Caboose.

And without Epsilon to keep her mind on track, she ended up _thinking_.

She understood, finally, what the idiots -her idiots- had. Caboose was absolutely right. The others didn’t see a problem with the way he was. They put him on the inside of dangerous walkways. They called him an idiot, yes, and worse, but they called him that while Tucker went down a cave to find him after Caboose tripped, while Grif made him mac and cheese because Caboose spaced out too much to use a stove.

Simmons called him an idiot when Caboose dropped his screwdriver, but Simmons came to Caboose first when his arm was acting funny. Even Wash was in on it, telling Caboose he was disturbingly fragile at the same time he brought Caboose back his dog.

Wash wasn’t in the room she shared with him, and Carolina sat on her bunk, almost at a loss with what to do with actual privacy. Sarge made pointed comments about Caboose’s omelette of a brain while Sarge and Caboose were building robots the same way he made them about some of Donut’s less-masculine traits when Donut was demonstrating how to break a man’s jaw in armor. They were all equally imperfect.

Nobody had ever made fun of Maine’s muteness. Not the backhanded way they told Caboose he was stupid, to his face, while helping him. Not the way that let Caboose give it right back, physically throwing Grif in a shower, pointing out to Tucker that joke was too soon, hiding from that medic who followed them around. They _talked_ , they talked to each other and about each other, and they were only mean when they were honest.

And for all the cruelty she saw, it meant that when Caboose had a seizure in a firefight -now that she knew about them, she could remember half a dozen times at least he’d clearly had one- they pulled him out of danger. Maybe it wasn’t right, but he was still _alive_. That counted for a lot.

Nobody had ever looked out for York’s blind side. He hadn’t let them, insisted that Delta was more than enough, insisted he was fine. Carolina started pulling her armor off, stacking it neatly. York hated any reminder that he might need taking care of, even before Tex had saved his life.

It had been so long since she’d had both privacy and safety. And usually by then she was too tired. How long had it been since she thought about York taking care of her? Too long. Not long enough.

She couldn’t think about York, not now. Not like this. It still...no. 

There would be time for that later. Sleep now, while she could get it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caboose still has the bottle of pills. The apple sauce is not drugged. In case you're wondering.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cupcakes, birthday presents, and sex. Not in that order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. Thanks for sticking with me this far. I hope you like it.

Caboose had done a good job on the wrapping paper, if he did say so himself. He’d even managed to find paper ribbon in Carolina’s color for an enormous bow. So he had to work to keep the smile on his face when Carolina’s response was, “What is this?”

“It’s a birthday present,” Caboose said, pushing it into her arms.

“It’s nowhere near my birthday,” Carolina said, but she didn’t pretend it was or call him an idiot.

Caboose figured that meant she’d listen to his logic. “But I have known you for more than a year, Carolina. So I missed your birthday. And I didn’t see you get any birthday presents and everyone should get birthday presents and this is yours.”

“Well...thank you, Caboose,” Carolina said. She sounded sad. When was the last birthday present someone had given her?

“I am going to take the pills, because I do not want to be dead,” Caboose said. Then his mouth added purely of its own free will, “ Also you are pretty.”

Carolina gave him that headtilt that meant nothing good. “You are not a mindreader so if I want you to know something I need to say it with words,” he added.

And he did think she was pretty, he really did. Caboose would love to have sex with Carolina, because she looked like she needed a hug and some help to be happy. But she wouldn’t ever sleep with him. Nobody would anymore. They thought he would never get any better. “Do you think Wash is crazy?” It wasn’t what Caboose meant to ask but it was almost close enough.

Carolina took a minute to answer. Caboose wondered if she was consulting Epsilon. “Wash used to hurt himself,” she said. “He’d see things that weren’t there, or not see things that were, get in trouble because of that. Maybe if I knew what he was seeing, what he did would make perfect sense. But maybe not.”

“And now,” Caboose pressed. “Is Wash crazy now?” If he takes the pills and stops missing time, will his friends stop treating him like a child?

“It doesn’t matter,” Carolina said. “He knows what’s real now. He can make his own choices.”

“I used to, too.” Carolina didn’t say anything so Caboose plowed on. “I used to hurt myself and it was really bad. There was fire. It was because I had more than one AI, I think? Because Doc is fine.” If he talked fast enough, he didn’t have to think about it happening, about his head full of anger and Tex and his best friend and no room left for Caboose. “I don’t like thinking about that.”

Carolina still didn’t say anything, but she gave him the look Tex used to give Church, the look that meant she knew more than he did. “So if O’Malley’s brother fixed me a little how do I make my friends realize I’m different now? Because I needed them to take care of me but now I won’t.”

“You don’t have to prove anything,” she said, and it was the voice Wash used when Tucker was sad. “They care about you. They’ll see.”

“I don’t know,” Caboose argued, because this was very important. “See, they’re not very smart. Especially Sarge who still doesn’t know Wash is…” how did that go? “Warm for his form.”

Carolina laughed at that, even though it wasn’t really super-funny. Caboose didn’t complain because Carolina laughing was better than Christmas and supply drop and birthdays and the Reds making cake. “You are right, you are absolutely right,” Carolina said. “If Wash and Sarge still haven’t managed to be on the same page, we’re going to have to explain this to them in very tiny words.”

That Carolina said “we” made something small and warm tuck up in Caboose’s chest, under his ribs. He wished he could make Carolina laugh again. He liked to see her happy.

* * *

It seemed, lately, all Carolina had been doing was tracking down Blue team. She left Epsilon behind while she searched out Tucker. Bless his heart, but Epsilon was a distracting little asshole and getting information about what had happened before he came around made him throw fits.

Tucker was sitting over on the smoking porch with Grif, holding an unlit cigarette. Plausible deniability, she thought, since he was standing downwind of the orange soldier. “We need to talk,” she told them, perching on the railing. “About Caboose.”

“What did he do now?” Tucker asked. “Anyways he’s not my problem now. Go bug Wash.”

Carolina took her helmet off. It seemed unfair to be wearing it when they weren’t. “In Blood Gulch,” she clarified. “How did he have two AIs?”

“He didn’t,” Grif said, ashing out his cigarette. “He just had the evil one. Omicron.”

“Omega,” Tucker corrected. “And there was the time Tex and Church had to go in his head to kick Omega out, remember?”

Grif shook his head. “No, I do not. I may have been a little distracted by you running me over with a _motherfucking tank_.” Carolina’s eyebrows raised at that one. She had heard about the accident, but not that Tucker had been driving.

Apparently they had long since moved on, since there was no real rancor in his voice and Tucker waved that off easily. “No, dude, it was after that. You needed to turn off your radio. Lopez was singing. It was horrible.”

“I do remember that,” Grif said. “Man, if I’d known that was why, I would have left it on. Demonic possession cannot possibly be worse than Lopez’s singing.” 

“Can we focus,” Carolina sighed.

Tucker shrugged. “That’s it. Church and Tex went into Caboose’s head to knock Omega out. Lopez sang to Sheila because he had the hots for her. How can a robot have such a raging hard-on?”

“I’d think you’d be the expert on robo-cock, after all the times you sucked Church’s dick,” Grif said, and while he was grinning it wasn’t as nasty as Carolina expected.

But that didn’t matter. “You can’t fit four people in one head!” Carolina didn’t think they were lying, exactly, but there was no way that was possible. Three was bad. Four should have left Caboose a shell. He wasn’t as strong as Maine. He _couldn’t_ be. 

“No shit,” Grif said, distracting her. “Caboose used to be real fucked up.”

“Used to be?” Tucker snorted.

“More fucked up than now.”

“Yeah, he got better.”

“With no help from you,” Carolina said, thinking of what Caboose had said. They told Caboose there was nothing wrong with him. Perhaps they had meant it a kindness, perhaps they had a reason, but they hadn’t helped.

“What the hell were we supposed to do?” Tucker folded his arms, and his eyes were hard. “The medic was possessed, Tex was the only one with half a clue and she did all she could with what we had. That was a hell of a week, let me tell you. Anyways, he got straightened out after he got transferred, right Grif?” Grif became very interested in counting how many cigarettes he had left. “Grif?”

“Look, Rat’s Nest was different, all right? I tried to look out for him but the damn Blues kept shooting at me. They didn’t tell me, I knew they were assholes but I didn’t think they could be _that_ bad!”

Carolina curled her hands into fists. “Tell me what happened.”

“I assumed what Tucker did.” Grif was starting to sweat under Carolina’s glare. Good. “He disappeared one day and I figured they sent him out for help. He needed it! He was so messed up without Church around, shooting people and setting things on fire.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Caboose,” Tucker put in but Grif shook his head.

“You don’t understand. He was seriously trying to kill people. But they were running around in armor, he didn’t deserve what happened. They couldn’t have thought it would help him, and I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know, I didn’t know!”

“What happened,” Carolina said. “Before I shoot you. What did they do to him.”

Grif looked around, looked up, looked for help before he answered. “They put him in the brig, put him in restraints, and didn’t even leave him a light on.”

Tucker swore in Sangheli, long and low and hissing dark. Carolina thought of Wash screaming and pulling against leather, remembered how sick she’d felt, but at least they had left the lights on. She hadn’t known it could have been worse.

“Caboose only told me a few days ago,” Grif said quietly, more upset than Carolina had ever heard from him. “It was Delta that helped him. He had Delta for a little bit, and Delta must have cleaned up what he could.”

Tucker shook his head and swore again, in English this time. Then he pushed his hair out of his face and said, “That was years ago, and he seems all right now. Ties his shoes and everything.”

“Remember when he got us into Command?” Grif said with a weak smile.

“I wasn’t there,” Carolina said. “How did he do it?”

“How have you never heard this story?” Tucker groaned. “Grif loves this story.”

“We got in a tank, followed Wash in a jeep. Caboose was right, they assumed since Wash was supposed to be there, they didn’t have to check the tank. You’d think they would have plugged the hole, but he knew their checkpoint protocol. Somehow.”

“No mystery,” Tucker said.”Caboose is full of weird shit like that. Tex used to tell him stories and I swear he’d quote them back word-perfect.”

“It was still a great plan, even for him. One of the top ten.”

“Wait,” Carolina said, still reeling from what Grif had said about Rat’s Nest. “What do you mean even for him?”

Grif looked at her like she was stupid. “Caboose has the best plans,” Tucker said, slowly. “Some of them are horrible, but when he’s right, he’s _right._ And he’s right more than half the time.”

“Better plans than Sarge, even when they’re bad,” Grif agreed.

Carolina wondered if she could half-murder them. Did Emily have enough supplies to fix them? Maybe they’d get better on their own, they seemed really hard to kill. “And have you ever told Caboose that, in the endless stream of bullshit you send his way?”

“Uh, the teasing?” Tucker asked. “He’s the rookie. That’s part of the job.”

“Yeah, he’s a big boy,” Grif said. “If he has a problem with that, he can speak up for himself like Donut did.”

Carolina shook her head. “Caboose is right. You are fucking stupid.” She left, thinking about Caboose on cold concrete.

* * *

According to Dr. Grey, Caboose had won the lottery. The pills worked the first dosage he tried, with no side-effects or anything. Caboose didn’t feel any better, but he didn’t feel any worse and Dr. Grey seemed happy so he didn’t see the harm in taking them. And the clock stopped skipping. Suddenly he had lots more time to get things done.

He had bigger problems. Namely, making cupcakes for Carolina. And having sex with Carolina. And the team that was dedicated to making sure these things got fucked up _spectacularly_.

“You have to listen carefully,” Sarge was saying while Caboose tried to figure out how to rescue the batter from Sarge’s help. “There’s no dummy light. You’ll know from the vibrations and the sounds. Don’t get discouraged it takes a few times to figure it out, kid.”

“I thought Caboose knew how to drive a stick?” Wash said from the corner he’d camped out in. Simmons shrugged in response.

“And don’t forget to pump the clutch! Nobody likes ground gears! The gearshift isn’t as important as the clutch!” Did Sarge make up the bottle-rocket and diesel engine comparison all by himself?

Caboose decided that he’d just have to bake and pray. “Thank you very much for the advice, but I have made love to a woman before.” Clearly Sarge had never seen a naked woman. Ever. For Wash’s sake, Caboose hoped the old man at least knew what to do with his dick.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Simmons said, holding his hands up. “Caboose, you’ve asked Tucker for far too many details about his sex life to know how it works.”

“Sarge was talking about sex?” Wash asked no-one in particular.

“Tucker got pregnant with an alien. I do not want to be pregnant with an alien. That has nothing to do with human ladies.” Caboose slid the pan in the stove, closed it, mumbled a quick prayer.

Wash’s head thunked audibly into the wall. “Jesus Christ. That makes perfect sense.”

“Yes. I always make sense,” Caboose said.

“And nobody caught on. None of you have enough common sense to fill a _shell casing_ , even if you pooled it!” Wash hit his head against the wall again, harder than Caboose liked.

Caboose handed him the chocolate batter covered spoon. “I know what to do with a woman, even a half-shark woman,” he said. He wondered if it would be different. Caboose had never slept with a woman who could break his grip before. He wondered if that meant it was okay for him to hold on to Carolina as tight as he could.

“Epsilon’s rubbing off on you, boy?” Sarge asked. “You have a thing for a woman who can break you in half?” He sounded downright _proud_.

“Wait, what?” Simmons screeched. “Carolina? You want to sleep with Carolina?”

“She deserves good sex,” Caboose said. He really should be cleaning. How did batter make it to the cupboard door? Oh, right, that’s where the cupcake papers were. “She is a very attractive woman.” Caboose had wanted her ever since she showed up and yelled at him and made his knees weak with how badly he wanted her to yell at him. Or not yell at him because he was doing it right.

“How is this my life?” Wash asked around the wooden spoon in his mouth.

“Because we fixed you,” Caboose reminded him. “Are you going to help me frost the cupcakes?”

* * *

It was late, and Wash was on patrol, and Carolina should have been thinking about Caboose. She should have been thinking about him and York and Maine, about people not asking questions, about how to save Caboose where she’d failed before.

But instead, she thought about how Caboose told her she was pretty. It had been a long time since anyone had said something like that to her. How many people on Chorus had seen her without her helmet?

She almost expected the knock on the door.

Caboose was on the other side, holding a plate of cupcakes. Carolina considered them for half a second, and decided “homemade” was the right way to describe them.

“I baked you cupcakes,” Caboose said, holding up the plate. “For Halloween.”

“It’s April,” Carolina said, stepping back so Caboose could come inside.

“I know.” Caboose set them on Wash’s nightstand. “But I could only find orange and yellow frosting and Sarge took all the yellow.”

“Thank you, Caboose,” she said. Really, she had never earned his kindness. “Will you help me eat them?”

He nodded, sat on Wash’s bed next to her, took off his helmet. It wasn’t easy to peel the cupcake paper off with gloves on, so they both pulled their gloves off. Carolina thought it was interesting their gloves were the same size when their hands so drastically weren’t.

They ate their cupcakes in comfortable silence. The cupcakes were good, better than Carolina expected from a war zone. She ate three of the five, and licked the frosting off her fingers when she was done.

Caboose watched her, paper wrinkling as he clenched his fist.

Carolina knew, she just knew. She shifted so she could face him fully while she sucked two fingers in her mouth, swirled her tongue around them to get every last speck of frosting. And she would swear Caboose didn’t breathe until she pulled them out with a barely audible sound.

He didn’t move, so Carolina reached out and took his hand in both of hers. Brought it to her mouth and coaxed his thumb enough apart from the others that she could take the tip into her mouth. He tasted like sugar and salt and neoprene from his gloves, skin and engine grease ground in deep and when she let his thumb slip out of her mouth he took her face in his hands and kissed her.

Only when they had to breathe did they break apart, hands immediately flying to armor latches as they stripped in record time. Carolina stood in front of him in only her undersuit, and he hesitated only a moment with his hands on the zipper. “Are you...can I?” he asked her collarbone.

Carolina slid onto his lap. He was so much bigger than York, smaller than Maine. “Yes,” she said, close enough to kiss the corner of his jaw. “I want you to fuck me.”

Under her hands, his whole body shivered. He slid his own hands under her thighs, picked her up and whirled her around to lie on the bed. She reached up and wound her fingers in his messy curls while he pulled the zipper down, agonizingly slow. His mouth followed, and he pushed the suit off her shoulders while sucking a dark mark on her neck.

Carolina’s back arched when Caboose’s hand slid down her side, silently guiding him between her legs while he tasted her nipples. He knew what he was doing, needing hardly any instruction before finding the rhythm that had her biting into his shoulder with one leg thrown over his hip.

The feeling hit her hard, and it took Carolina a second to realize it was pleasure. Caboose’s fingers on her clit felt _good_ , like nothing had in too long. She’d forgotten the heat building in her belly and the aching need for something hard to press into. 

All too soon, Caboose straightened up. Carolina took care of herself while watching what he was doing, when was the last time she’d been so wet? She couldn’t remember, didn’t really try, as Caboose located a condom from an armor pouch and made to roll it on.

“Let me,” Carolina said, pushing him back onto the bed with one hand. The condom felt old but it was still sealed, and Caboose’s thighs trembled under her. She didn’t drag it out or get fancy, just rolled it on with military precision and swung herself onto his lap.

Caboose made a strangled noise as she rode him, and his hands curled around her arms. It seemed to last forever, sweat sticking to her hips and Caboose’s fingers tight against her wrists and the slick pressure she rocked against with every thrust of his hips. It went on, and on, and there was no war and no history and no seizures, just the heavy scent of sex and a feeling she thought was pleasure, something she half-recognized as coming.

Caboose cried out as he finished, high and clear and thin. He slid his hands up Carolina’s arms, pulled her close to his chest where Carolina could hear his heart. This, this was much better, she thought. He was here and alive and never in her dreams were there heartbeats, never did chests rise with shaky breaths. “Did you..?” he asked, tracing Carolina’s spine.

Reality crept slowly upon Carolina. “This was a mistake,” she said, twining her leg around Caboose’s. She didn’t want him to bolt before she finished her sentence. “This is Wash’s bed.”

Caboose laughed, the sound rolling like thunder. Carolina joined him, laughing until her stomach hurt, and then Caboose kissed it better, and they did end up in her bed. Eventually.

* * *

Caboose woke up, and the first thing he saw was the scars on the back of Carolina’s neck. They were bad. Worse than Wash’s, worse than Grif’s or Tuckers. Worst he’d ever seen, angry white and framed by red hair running like blood down her neck.

Her hair was soft, and it ran through his fingers like he imagined silk would. Caboose combed his fingers through her hair, and he didn’t know for how long but it didn’t feel anything like losing time used to.

Carolina woke up gradually under his hands, curling back towards him before reaching out to hit her birthday present. Only when the familiar aroma of coffee filled the room did she move out of his reach; pushed herself up on her elbows and smiled at him. “It is nice, having my own machine,” she said to him.

“I am glad you like it.” Caboose watched her reach back into the drawer, take out an almost-familiar orange bottle. “What’s that?”

“Seizure pills.” Carolina sat up and twisted open the bottle, plucked one out and picked up her mug. “Coffee and pamaxillol, the breakfast of champions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Sarge lifted the metaphor from somewhere else. Yes, Caboose hit the lucky numbers and stopped having seizures. Tucker and Grif didn't tone it down any though.
> 
> Thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
